Dear Paradox team,
Stealth and Cloaking tech is well known in almost all sci-fi universes and would be a powerfull enhancement to many existing systems in Stellaris. It was said in Dev Diary #164 that cloaking mechanics are already planned and originally a part of the espionage mechanics.
As far as we know, cloaking is not a part of Nemesis so here is my idea and maybe it will be in the game in a later expansion. In the following i will describe how i would like how stealth and cloaking could work and how it would be a interesting mechanic that would fit in many other stellaris systems and enhance them vastly.
First, what i would like to highlight is the difference between stealth and cloaking: A ship with a stealth components has technically a lower profile and sensor deflecting abilities. A cloaked ship is completely invisible and can only be detected by special technologies and sensor grids. This means from a gameplay perpective, that a stealt ship is most likely only detected by ships in the same system (optical) or few system away, reducing efectively the sensor range from enemy/neutral ships. A cloaked ship can not be seen until your fleet/sensor ship is very close to them with a dedicated detection component.
The first step, would be stealth. This is unlocked by a tech (somewhere between tier 2 and 3) or by a civic that give you a headstart in this mechanic. What it does is basically unlocking a few ship components with stealth mechanics that have multiple upgrade levels like normal components.
These components are: a stealth coated armor, a low profile reactor "booster" and a sensor deflecting shield. Each component is from a military perspective weaker than normal technologies. As an example a normal Tier 1 Nanocomposite Armor is giving 300 armor, but the stealth variant would only give 200 (example, of course a balancing question). Same with the shields. The advantage of a ship that has only (!) stealth coated armor equipped has the opponents sensor range reduced effectively by 1 or at higher levels 2. The same for the shields. So it's only usefull if you exclusively use stealth components in the respective category. The reactor booster has a different approach by lowering the reactor profile (reducing it's energy output by a certain amount like 20% or similar). In return the sensor detection range is further reduced and this is additive with all other components at the cost of output.
A enemy ship will of course only detect a ship in sensor range. If the sensor range against the stealth ships is reduced to 0, the enemy ship will see them only if it's in the same star system. So basically stealth is a trade-off from military strenght to hide your fleets and to have the option for a ambush.
Now cloaking. This is a far more advanced tech and should be enabled by an Ascension Perk (prequisities are stealth tech and 2-3 other Ascension Perks picked) to demonstrate the dedication of the empire to stealth technologies and to pay the advantage coming with this. Cloaking will apply only to some ships like science shis, construction ships, huge vessels with a Aura-component slot (titan and juggernaut) and a new type of espionage vessel.
So basically after picking the Ascension Perk, you unlock a special Project to invent a cloaking device. After completion, all science and construction ships are invisible and for the titan and juggernaught can a cloak field generator equipped in the Aura slot. A fleet with a Titan that has a Cloaking-Generator eqipped makes the complete fleet invisible. A Juggernaut has an area around, that cloakes every ship within.
So what does cloaking do? First a cloaked vessel can cross closed borders like they are open. This will help science ships to get to some anormalies and projects that are otherwise only reachable during a war or truce and can explore systems with dangerous wildlife ore leviathans in it. A Construction ship can skip closed borders to build in a system behind and are less likely destroyed on their way. Military fleets can skip closed borders as well and whats more important, don't attack a enemy fleet until the command is given. They can fly really close to every enemy as long this enemy don't has a detection tool developed and equipped.
Stealth is deactivated by every agressive action. This means, as soon your fleet attack a target, the cloak is lifted and your ships can immediately attack. As soon the fight is over, a cloak cooldown is applied and the ships will cloak as soon it's over. This cooldown is again a question of balance, so it shouldn't be too short, but not as long as a jump drive cooldown.
Science and Construction ships stay of course cloaked during their work.
If a cloaked ship is detected behind closed borders and even for a second, it is immediately expelled from that empire (like always) and maybe you loose some diplomatic standing (in case of the later explained espionage vessel this penalty should be even worse). So, how to detect a cloaked ship? First there is a technology, giving you a sensor suite that is around your fleet similar to a Aura component. For each ship with this sensor suite equipped, the range of this aura is increased. It need a huge amount of energy and will not work if the scanning ship itself is cloaked, so no invisible listening posts against cloaked vessels. This is mainly for making cloak tech usefull and giving a cloak tech empire a weakness against the own technology. The aura around your fleet is very small for each ship, so it's not usefull to build a singe ship and position it at a hyperlane chokepoint. But a fleet, especially a huge one, can maybe scan most if not all of a system. A listening post and a Citadel (with a fitting building) have increased detection range too, but not the complete system.
Now the interaction with espionage. As soon cloaking is invented, a new technology can be reseached for a kind of espionage/sabotage ship. This ships are cloaked by default and have a leader slot for a envoy. If a envoy is in, the ship is ready to work. As soon the cloaking tech is researched, your espionage offices in other empires will allow another type of operation. This "reveal weakpoint (category)" operation generates if finished a kind of Archeology site inside that empire only visible to you and availlable for a certain time. This can be a planet, a space station, a fleet or any other object with relevance to the chosen category. The espionage vessel has to manage to get to this position and start it's work similar to any other acheology site. If it's completed the impact is most likely huge. This ranges from stealing resources in bigger quantities, destroy a entire fleet, manipulate ethics, start uprisings, deactivate mega structures and so on. The espionage vessel is of course in permanent danger of beeing detected and has only a certain range to do so (if the detection sensor range is greater then the action range of the target the action will be impossible). If this happend the operation failed and the weakpoint is removed and it has to start from the beginning with a reveal weakpoint operation. A decloaked espionage vessel that has started it's mission is always hostile inside that empire and can be attacked immediately if they can manage to find it. So most likely it will be destroyed if you can't manage to run immediately. In addition you will lose diplomatic standing to that empire, because it's obvious you spied on them and tried a sabotage.
So, this is my concept for stealth and cloaking mechanics and how they tie into existing mechanics. Thanks for reading! I hope you like the concept.
Stealth and Cloaking tech is well known in almost all sci-fi universes and would be a powerfull enhancement to many existing systems in Stellaris. It was said in Dev Diary #164 that cloaking mechanics are already planned and originally a part of the espionage mechanics.
Espionage: Intel to determine how much you know about another empire, spy actions, cloaking, sabotage & general mischief.
As far as we know, cloaking is not a part of Nemesis so here is my idea and maybe it will be in the game in a later expansion. In the following i will describe how i would like how stealth and cloaking could work and how it would be a interesting mechanic that would fit in many other stellaris systems and enhance them vastly.
First, what i would like to highlight is the difference between stealth and cloaking: A ship with a stealth components has technically a lower profile and sensor deflecting abilities. A cloaked ship is completely invisible and can only be detected by special technologies and sensor grids. This means from a gameplay perpective, that a stealt ship is most likely only detected by ships in the same system (optical) or few system away, reducing efectively the sensor range from enemy/neutral ships. A cloaked ship can not be seen until your fleet/sensor ship is very close to them with a dedicated detection component.
The first step, would be stealth. This is unlocked by a tech (somewhere between tier 2 and 3) or by a civic that give you a headstart in this mechanic. What it does is basically unlocking a few ship components with stealth mechanics that have multiple upgrade levels like normal components.
These components are: a stealth coated armor, a low profile reactor "booster" and a sensor deflecting shield. Each component is from a military perspective weaker than normal technologies. As an example a normal Tier 1 Nanocomposite Armor is giving 300 armor, but the stealth variant would only give 200 (example, of course a balancing question). Same with the shields. The advantage of a ship that has only (!) stealth coated armor equipped has the opponents sensor range reduced effectively by 1 or at higher levels 2. The same for the shields. So it's only usefull if you exclusively use stealth components in the respective category. The reactor booster has a different approach by lowering the reactor profile (reducing it's energy output by a certain amount like 20% or similar). In return the sensor detection range is further reduced and this is additive with all other components at the cost of output.
A enemy ship will of course only detect a ship in sensor range. If the sensor range against the stealth ships is reduced to 0, the enemy ship will see them only if it's in the same star system. So basically stealth is a trade-off from military strenght to hide your fleets and to have the option for a ambush.
Now cloaking. This is a far more advanced tech and should be enabled by an Ascension Perk (prequisities are stealth tech and 2-3 other Ascension Perks picked) to demonstrate the dedication of the empire to stealth technologies and to pay the advantage coming with this. Cloaking will apply only to some ships like science shis, construction ships, huge vessels with a Aura-component slot (titan and juggernaut) and a new type of espionage vessel.
So basically after picking the Ascension Perk, you unlock a special Project to invent a cloaking device. After completion, all science and construction ships are invisible and for the titan and juggernaught can a cloak field generator equipped in the Aura slot. A fleet with a Titan that has a Cloaking-Generator eqipped makes the complete fleet invisible. A Juggernaut has an area around, that cloakes every ship within.
So what does cloaking do? First a cloaked vessel can cross closed borders like they are open. This will help science ships to get to some anormalies and projects that are otherwise only reachable during a war or truce and can explore systems with dangerous wildlife ore leviathans in it. A Construction ship can skip closed borders to build in a system behind and are less likely destroyed on their way. Military fleets can skip closed borders as well and whats more important, don't attack a enemy fleet until the command is given. They can fly really close to every enemy as long this enemy don't has a detection tool developed and equipped.
Stealth is deactivated by every agressive action. This means, as soon your fleet attack a target, the cloak is lifted and your ships can immediately attack. As soon the fight is over, a cloak cooldown is applied and the ships will cloak as soon it's over. This cooldown is again a question of balance, so it shouldn't be too short, but not as long as a jump drive cooldown.
Science and Construction ships stay of course cloaked during their work.
If a cloaked ship is detected behind closed borders and even for a second, it is immediately expelled from that empire (like always) and maybe you loose some diplomatic standing (in case of the later explained espionage vessel this penalty should be even worse). So, how to detect a cloaked ship? First there is a technology, giving you a sensor suite that is around your fleet similar to a Aura component. For each ship with this sensor suite equipped, the range of this aura is increased. It need a huge amount of energy and will not work if the scanning ship itself is cloaked, so no invisible listening posts against cloaked vessels. This is mainly for making cloak tech usefull and giving a cloak tech empire a weakness against the own technology. The aura around your fleet is very small for each ship, so it's not usefull to build a singe ship and position it at a hyperlane chokepoint. But a fleet, especially a huge one, can maybe scan most if not all of a system. A listening post and a Citadel (with a fitting building) have increased detection range too, but not the complete system.
Now the interaction with espionage. As soon cloaking is invented, a new technology can be reseached for a kind of espionage/sabotage ship. This ships are cloaked by default and have a leader slot for a envoy. If a envoy is in, the ship is ready to work. As soon the cloaking tech is researched, your espionage offices in other empires will allow another type of operation. This "reveal weakpoint (category)" operation generates if finished a kind of Archeology site inside that empire only visible to you and availlable for a certain time. This can be a planet, a space station, a fleet or any other object with relevance to the chosen category. The espionage vessel has to manage to get to this position and start it's work similar to any other acheology site. If it's completed the impact is most likely huge. This ranges from stealing resources in bigger quantities, destroy a entire fleet, manipulate ethics, start uprisings, deactivate mega structures and so on. The espionage vessel is of course in permanent danger of beeing detected and has only a certain range to do so (if the detection sensor range is greater then the action range of the target the action will be impossible). If this happend the operation failed and the weakpoint is removed and it has to start from the beginning with a reveal weakpoint operation. A decloaked espionage vessel that has started it's mission is always hostile inside that empire and can be attacked immediately if they can manage to find it. So most likely it will be destroyed if you can't manage to run immediately. In addition you will lose diplomatic standing to that empire, because it's obvious you spied on them and tried a sabotage.
So, this is my concept for stealth and cloaking mechanics and how they tie into existing mechanics. Thanks for reading! I hope you like the concept.
Last edited:
- 3